March Violets

by Philip Kerr

  ‘Herr Six, this is going to sound crazy, I know, but I now believe that at least until yesterday afternoon your daughter was alive, and preparing to fly to London with your private secretary.’

  Six’s face darkened, and for a moment I thought he was going to attack me. ‘What the hell are you babbling about now, you bloody fool?’ he roard. ‘What do you mean “alive”? My daughter is dead and buried.’

  ‘I suppose that she must have come home unexpectedly and found Paul in bed with his bit of brush, both of them drunk as cats. Grete shot them both and then, realizing what she had done, she telephoned the only person she felt she could turn to, Haupthandler. He was in love with her. He would have done anything for her, and that included helping her to get away with murder.’

  Six sat down heavily. He was pale and trembling. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said. But it was clear that he was finding my explanation only too plausible.

  ‘I expect it was his idea to burn the bodies and make it look like it was your daughter who had died in bed with her husband, and not his mistress. He took Grete’s wedding-ring and put it on the other woman’s finger. Then he had the bright idea of taking the diamonds out of the safe and making it look like a burglary. That’s why he left the door open. The diamonds were to stake their new life somewhere. New lives and new identities. But what Haupthandler didn’t know was that somebody had already been in the safe that evening and removed certain papers that were compromising to you. This fellow was a real expert, a puzzler not long out of prison. A neat worker too. Not the sort to use explosives or do anything untidy like leave a safe door open. As drunk as they were, I’ll bet that Paul and Eva never even heard him. One of Red’s boys, of course. Red used to carry out all your dodgy little schemes, didn’t he? While Goering’s man Von Greis had these documents, things were merely inconvenient. The Prime Minister is a pragmatist. He could use the evidence of your previous criminality to ensure that you were useful to him, and make you toe the Party’s economic line. But when Paul and the Black Angels got hold of them, that was altogether more uncomfortable. You knew that Paul wanted to destroy you. Backed into a corner you had to do something. So, as usual, you got Red Dieter to take care of it.

  ‘But later on, with Paul and the girl dead, and the diamonds gone from the safe, it looked to you as though Red’s man had been greedy, and that he’d taken more than he was supposed to. Not unreasonably you concluded that it was he who had killed your daughter, and so you told Red to put things right. Red managed to kill one of the two burglars, the man who had driven the car; but he missed the other, the one who had opened the safe, who therefore still had the papers and, you assumed, the diamonds. That’s where I came in. Because you couldn’t be sure that it wasn’t Red himself who had double-crossed you, and so you probably didn’t tell him about the diamonds, just as you didn’t tell the police.’

  Six took the dead cigar from out of the corner of his mouth and laid it, unsmoked, on the ashtray. He was starting to look very old.

  ‘I have to hand it to you,’ I said. ‘Your reasoning was perfect: find the man with the diamonds and you would find the man with the documents. And when you found out that Helfferich hadn’t hazed you, you put him on my tail. I led him to the man with the diamonds and, you thought, the documents too. At this very moment your German Strength associates are probably trying to persuade Herr and Frau Teichmüller to tell them where Mutschmann is. He’s the man who really has the documents. And naturally they won’t know what the hell he’s talking about. Red won’t like that. He’s not a very patient man, and I’m sure I don’t have to remind you of all people of what that means.’

  The steel magnate stared into space, as if he had not heard one word I had said. I grabbed the lapels of his jacket, hauled him to his feet, and slapped him hard.

  ‘Did you hear what I said? These murderers, these torturers, have your daughter.’ His mouth went as slack as an empty douche-bag. I slapped it again.

  ‘We’ve got to stop them.’

  ‘So where’s he got them?’ I let him go and pushed him away from me.

  ‘On the river,’ he said. ‘The Grosse Zug, near Schmöckwitz.’

  I picked up the telephone. ‘What’s the number?’

  Six swore. ‘It’s not on the phone,’ he gasped. ‘Oh Christ, what are we going to do?’

  ‘We’ll have to go there,’ I said. ‘We could drive there, but it would be quicker by boat.’

  Six sprang round the desk. ‘I’ve got a slipper at a mooring close by. We can drive there in five minutes.’

  Stopping only to collect the boat keys and a can of petrol, we took the BMW and drove to the shores of the lake. The water was busier than on the previous day. A stiff breeze had encouraged the presence of a large number of small yachts, and their white sails covered the surface of the water like the wings of hundreds of moths.

  I helped Six remove the green tarpaulin from the boat, and poured petrol into the tank while he connected the battery and started the engine. The slipper roared into life at the third time of asking, and the five-metre polished-wood hull strained at the mooring ropes, eager to be up-river. I threw Six the first line, and having untied the second I stepped quickly into the boat beside him. Then he wrenched the wheel to one side, punched the throttle lever and we jerked forwards.

  It was a powerful boat and as fast as anything that even the river-police might have had. We raced up the Havel towards Spandau, Six holding the white steering-wheel grimly, oblivious to the effect that the slipper’s enormous wake was having on the other waterway craft. It slapped against the hulls of boats moored under trees or beside small jetties, bringing their irate owners out on deck to shake their fists and utter shouts that were lost in the noise of the slipper’s big engine. We went east on to the Spree.

  ‘I hope to God we’re not too late,’ shouted Six. He had quite recovered his former vigour, and stared resolutely ahead of him, the man of action, with only a slight frown on his face to give a clue to his anxiety.

  ‘I’m usually an excellent judge of a man’s character,’ he said, as if by way of explanation, ‘but if it’s any consolation to you, Herr Gunther, I’m afraid I gravely underestimated you. I had not expected you to be as doggedly inquisitive. Frankly, I thought you’d do precisely what you were told. But then you’re not the kind of man who takes kindly to be being told what to do, are you?’

  ‘When you get a cat to catch the mice in your kitchen, you can’t expect it to ignore the rats in the cellar.’

  ‘I suppose not,’ he said.

  We continued east, up-river, past the Tiergarten and Museum Island. By the time we turned south towards Treptower Park and Köpenick, I had asked him what grudge his son-in-law had had against him. To my surprise he showed no reluctance to answer my question; nor did he affect the indignant, rose-tinted viewpoint that had characterized all his previous remarks concerning members of his family, living and dead.

  ‘As well-acquainted with my personal affairs as you are, Herr Gunther, you probably don’t need to be reminded that Ilse is my second wife. I married my first wife, Lisa, in 1910, and the following year she became pregnant. Unfortunately things went badly and our child was still-born. Not only that, but there was no possibility of her having another child. In the same hospital was an unmarried girl who had given birth to a healthy child at about the same time. She had no way of looking after it, so my wife and I persuaded her to let us adopt her daughter. That was Grete. We never told her she was adopted while my wife was alive. But after she died, Grete discovered the truth, and set about trying to trace her real mother.

  ‘By this time of course Grete was married to Paul, and was devoted to him. For his part, Paul was never worthy of her. I suspect he was rather more keen on my family name and money than he was on my daughter. But to everyone else they must have seemed like a perfectly happy couple.

  ‘Well, all that changed overnight when Grete finally tracked down her real mother. The woman was a gypsy from Vienna, w
orking in a Bierkeller on Potsdamer Platz. If it was a shock to Grete it was the end of the world to that little shit Paul. Something called racial impurity, whatever that amounts to, gypsies running the Jews a close second for unpopularity. Paul blamed me for not having informed Grete earlier. But when I first saw her I didn’t see a gypsy child, but a beautiful healthy baby, and a young mother who was as keen as Lisa and I that we should adopt her and give her the best in life. Not that it would have mattered if she’d been a rabbi’s daughter. We’d still have taken her. Well, you remember what it was like then, Herr Gunther. People didn’t make distinctions like they do these days. We were all just Germans. Of course, Paul didn’t see it that way. All he could think of was the threat Grete now posed to his career in the S S and the Party.’ He laughed bitterly.

  We came to Grünau, home of the Berlin Regatta Club. On a large lake on the other side of some trees, a 2,000-metre Olympic rowing course had been marked out. Above the noise of the slipper’s engine could be heard the sound of a brass band, and a public-address system describing the afternoon’s events.

  ‘There was no reasoning with him. Naturally, I lost my temper with him, and called him and his beloved Fuhrer all sorts of names. After that we were enemies. There was nothing I could do for Grete. I watched his hate breaking her heart. I urged her to leave him, but she wouldn’t. She refused to believe that he wouldn’t learn to love her again. And so she stayed with him.’

  ‘But meanwhile he set out to destroy you, his own father-in-law.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Six. ‘While all the time he sat there in the comfortable home that my money had provided for them. If Grete did kill him as you say, then he certainly had it coming. If she hadn’t done it I might have been tempted to have arranged it myself.’

  ‘How was he going to finish you?’ I asked. ‘What evidence was there that was so compromising to you?’

  The slipper reached the junction of Langer See and Seddin-see. Six throttled back and steered the boat south in the direction of the hilly peninsula that was Schmöckwitz.

  ‘Clearly your curiosity knows no bounds, Herr Gunther. But I’m sorry to disappoint you. I welcome your assistance, but I see no reason why I should answer all your questions.’

  I shrugged. ‘I don’t suppose it matters much now,’ I said.

  The Grosse Zug was an inn on one of the two islands between the marshes of Köpenick and Schmöckwitz. Less than a couple of hundred metres in length, and no more than fifty wide, the island was tightly packed with tall pine trees. Close to the water’s edge there were more signs saying ‘Private’ and ‘Keep Out’ than on a fan-dancer’s dressing-room door.

  ‘What is this place?’

  ‘This is the summer headquarters of the German Strength ring. They use it for their more secret meetings. You can see why, of course. It’s so out of the way.’ He started to drive the boat round the island, looking for somewhere to moor. On the opposite side we found a small jetty, to which were tied several boats. Up a short grassy slope was a cluster of neatly painted boathouses, and beyond it the Grosse Zug Inn itself. I collected up a length of rope and jumped off the slipper on to the jetty. Six cut the engine.

  ‘We’d best be careful how we approach the place,’ he said, joining me on the jetty, and tying up the front of the boat. ‘Some of these fellows are inclined to shoot first and ask questions later.’

  ‘I know just how they feel,’ I said.

  We walked off the jetty and up the slope towards the boathouses. Excepting the other boats, there was nothing to indicate that there was anyone else on the islet. But closer to the boathouses, two armed men emerged from behind an upturned boat. Their faces wore expressions that were cool enough to cope with me telling them that I was carrying bubonic plague. It’s the sort of confidence that only a sawn-off can give you.

  ‘That’s far enough,’ said the taller of the two. ‘This is private property. Who are you and what are doing here?’ He didn’t lift the gun from his forearm where it was cradled like a sleeping baby, but then he did not have to lift it very far to get off a shot. Six made the explanations.

  ‘It’s desperately important that I see Red.’ He thumped his fist into the palm of his hand as he spoke. It made him seem rather melodramatic, I thought. ‘My name is Hermann Six. I can assure you gentlemen he’ll want to see me. But please hurry.’

  They stood there shuffling uncertainly. ‘The boss always tells us if he’s expecting anyone. And he didn’t say anything about you two.’

  ‘Despite that, you can depend on it that there’ll be hell to pay if he finds out you turned us away.’

  Shotgun looked at his partner, who nodded and walked away towards the inn. He said: ‘We’ll wait here while we check it out.’

  Wringing his hands nervously, Six called out after him: ‘Please hurry. It’s a matter of life or death.’

  Shotgun grinned at that. I guessed he was used to matters of life and death where his boss was concerned. Six produced a cigarette and fed it nervously into his mouth. He snatched it out again without lighting it.

  ‘Please,’ he said to Shotgun. ‘Are you holding a couple on the island, a man and a woman? The - the — ’

  ‘The Teichmüllers,’ I said.

  Shotgun’s grin disappeared under a whole pantomine of dumb. ‘I don’t know nothing,’ he said dully.

  We kept looking anxiously at the inn. It was a two-storey affair, white-painted with neat, black shutters, a windowbox full of geraniums and a high mansard roof. As we watched, smoke started to come out of the chimney, and when the door finally opened I half expected an old woman to come out carrying a tray of gingerbread. Shotgun’s pitman beckoned us forward.

  We moved Indian-file through the door, with Shotgun bringing up the rear. The two stumpy barrels gave me an itch in the back of my neck: if you have ever seen someone shot with a sawn-off at close range, you would know why. There was a small hallway with a couple of hatstands, only nobody had bothered to check his hat. Beyond that was a small room, where somebody was playing the piano like he had a couple of fingers missing. At the far end there was a round bar and some stools. Behind it were lots of sports trophies and I wondered who had won them and why. The Most Murders in One Year perhaps, or The Cleanest Knockout With an India Rubber - I had a nominee for that award myself if I could find him. But probably they had just bought them to make the place look more like what it was supposed to be - the headquarters of an ex-convicts’ welfare association.

  Shotgun’s partner grunted. ‘This way,’ he said, and led us towards a door beside the bar.

  Through the door the room was like an office. A brass lamp hung from one of the beams on the ceiling. There was a long walnut chaise-longue in the corner by the window, and next to it, a big bronze of a naked girl, the sort that looks as though the model must have had a bad accident with a circular saw. There was more art on the panelled walls, but of the sort that normally you only find in the pages of midwives’ textbooks.

  Red Dieter, his black shirt-sleeves rolled up, and his collar off, stood up from the green-leather sofa and flicked his cigarette into the fire. Glancing first at Six and then at me, he looked uncertain as to whether he ought to look welcoming or worried. He didn’t get time to make a choice. Six stepped forwards, and caught him by the throat.

  ‘For God’s sake what have you done with her?’ From a corner of the room another man came to my assistance, and each of us taking one of the old man’s arms, we pulled him off.

  ‘Hold up, hold up,’ yelled Red. He straightened his jacket and tried to control his natural indignation. Then he glanced around his person, as if to check that his dignity was still intact.

  Six continued to shout. ‘My daughter, what have you done with my daughter?’

  The gangster frowned and looked quizzically at me. ‘What’s he fucking talking about?’

  ‘The two people your boys snatched from the beach house yesterday,’ I said urgently. ‘What have you done with them? Look, there’
s no time for an explanation now, but the girl is his daughter.’

  He looked incredulous. ‘You mean, she’s not dead after all?’ he said.

  ‘Come on, man,’ I said.

  Red swore, his face darkened like dying gaslight, his lips quivering like he had just chewed on broken glass. A thin, blue vein stood off his square forehead like a piece of ivy on a brick wall. He pointed at Six.

  ‘Keep him here,’ he growled. Red shouldered his way through the men outside like an angry wrestler. ‘If this is one of your tricks, Gunther, I’ll personally fillet your fucking nose.’

  ‘I’m not that stupid. But as it happens, there is one thing that’s puzzling me.’

  At the front door Red stopped and glared at me. His face was the colour of blood, almost purple with rage. ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘I had a girl working with me. Name of Inge Lorenz. She disappeared from the area of the beach house in Wannsee not long before your boys tapped me on the head.’

  ‘So why ask me?’

  ‘You’ve already kidnapped two people, so a third along the way might not be too much for your conscience to bear.’

  Red almost spat in my face. ‘What’s a fucking conscience, then?’ he said, and carried on through the door.

  Outside the inn I hurried after him in the direction of one of the boathouses. A man came out, buttoning up his flies. Misinterpreting his boss’s purposeful stride, he grinned.

  ‘You come to give her one as well, boss?’

  Red drew level with the man, looked blankly at him for a second, and then punched him hard in the stomach. ‘Shut your stupid mouth,’ he roared, and kicked his way through the boathouse door. I stepped over the man’s gasping body and followed him inside.

  I saw a long rack on which were laid several eight-oar boats, and tied to it was a man stripped to the waist. His head hung down, and there were numerous burns on his neck and shoulders. I guessed that it was Haupthändler, although as I came closer I could see that his face was so badly contused as to be unrecognizable. Two men stood idly by, paying no attention to their captive. They were both smoking cigarettes, and one of them wore a set of brass knuckles.